Word of the president

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I am pleased to welcome you at the 11th Paris Hepatology Conference (PHC).

As usual, the meeting will provide the state of the art information on the management of patients with liver disease by highly renowned international experts who will present the most recent results in the field and their clinical applications.

Thanks to the outstanding progress made in the treatment of hepatitis C with the new direct acting antiviral combinations, almost all the patients can now be cured, including formerly «difficult to treat» patients (those with cirrhosis, or pre-existing resistance mutations). These combinations are well tolerated and highly effective with short treatment (8-12 weeks).

Indeed, these advances raise the issue of how to facilitate access to treatment in more patients to reach the ultimate objective of eradicating hepatitis C. Eradication of HCV is now a dream shared by experts all over the world. To reach this goal a joint strategy is necessary involving different regions and countries. This will be debated during this PHC.

In hepatitis B, long term studies showed the safety and efficacy of NUC therapy. However the goal of therapy, HBsAg loss associated with a clinical cure, is rarely achieved. Combination with pegylated interféron triggers HBsAg decline in a subgroup of patients. Extensive research is focusing on viral eradication by developing new drugs with different mechanisms of action and different targets.

Hopefully, within the next five years, safe combinations of potent antivirals, effective immune-modulators and drugs interfering with protein synthesis or assembly will become available, with the ultimate goal of silencing or eradicating cccDNA.

This year, the PHC program includes a special focus on the emerging liver disease, NASH, in providing the status of the current knowledge and addressing the clinical issues. Debates on the controversies regarding diagnosis, prognosis and management of fatty liver/NASH are designed to help to clarify real life issues.

Specific sessions and workshops are dedicated to clinical issues commonly faced by all specialists: end-stage liver disease, HCC and liver transplantation. Also, the optimal management of less common liver diseases as vascular and auto-immune will be addressed.

Indeed, the ultimate goal of the PHC 2018 is to review the most current knowledge and discuss, in the most interactive way, their clinical applications with the most experienced experts to provide the optimal management and the best chance of cure to as many patients as possible, worldwide.

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